<![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, espn]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, espn]]> http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/espn http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/espn <![CDATA[ESPN Twitter Memo: The Remix]]> So now that the infamous memo has been passed around to everyone, ESPN has reworked their guidelines for those individuals still confused or incensed by the policy and what they can and cannot do.

This is the layman's version, tweaked with more specifics for all employees, and oddly not Tweeted by Ric Bucher, only because he's currently being water-boarded across George Bodenheimer's desk. (Status on his punishment — "the memo spells it out." More vacation for Bucher! )

But for those ESPN employees who are still confused about whether they can optimize their personal brand for a life after ESPN by writing blogs that touch on sports topics not authorized by ESPN, here's the answer: the swift billy club of Bristol justice will rain down upon them. So run to the hills, Cohn Heads.

DJ Poon-to drop that shit:

SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDELINES FOR ESPN EMPLOYEES

These guidelines apply to all ESPN employees who participate in any form of personal social networking. If you are an ESPN talent, or reporter engaged with social media, please also refer to those additional guidelines.

ESPN understands that employees may maintain or contribute to personal blogs, message boards, conversation pages and other forms of social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) outside of their job function and may periodically post information about their job or ESPN's activities on these outlets. If an employee posts ESPN or job-related information, they are required to exercise good judgment, abide by ESPN policy, and take the following into consideration.

ESPN employees are obligated to be aware of and comply with any applicable provisions set forth in ESPN's Employee Handbook and The Walt Disney Company's Standards of Business Conduct. Employees may not disclose confidential or proprietary company information or similar information of third parties who have shared such information with ESPN. ESPN's intellectual property, logos, trademarks, and copyrights may not be used in any manner.

If an employee is engaging on external social media platforms personally, they should not use the company's name in their identity (e.g. username, "handle" or screen name), nor should they speak as a representative of the company. If a media inquiry is generated, please direct it to the Communications Department.

If you are an ESPN talent, reporter, writer, producer, editor or other editorial decision maker or a public-facing ESPN employee, you are reminded that when you participate in public blogs or discussion activities, you are representing ESPN just as you would in any other public forum or medium, and you should exercise discretion, thoughtfulness and respect for your colleagues, business associates and our fans. All posted content is subject to review in accordance with, ESPN's employee policies and editorial guidelines.

ESPN's Values expressly state that care and respect for employees and each other will always be at the heart of our operations and that we are passionately committed to teamwork. Employees are responsible for acting in a manner that is consistent with our company Values. To that end, employees are expected to be courteous, respectful, and thoughtful about how other employees may be affected by postings. Incomplete, inaccurate, inappropriate, threatening, harassing or poorly worded postings may be harmful to other employees, damage employee relationships, undermine ESPN's effort to encourage teamwork, violate ESPN policy or harm the Company, which may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination. Employees bear full responsibility for the material they post on personal blogs or other social media.

For purposes of this policy, a "personal blog" or "social media" includes personal websites and all forms of on-line community activities such as on-line social networks, message boards, conversation pages, and chat rooms. If you have any questions regarding this policy and its application, please contact either your manager or the Human Resources Department

If only the rest of the Twitterverse would rise up and fight against the trolling censors of ESPN the same way the did for the Iranian protesters back in June. Everyone in the Twitterverse should change their time to EST and their location to Bristol.

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<![CDATA[Yes, there are "Series F" funding rounds and the Active Network just closed one]]> The Active Network, which owns sports portal Active.com and also provides Web-based marketing and other services, just raised $80 million closing a round of funding led by Disney's ESPN Networks. It's Active Networks' fifth round since 1999, increasing total investment in the company to $275 million. In 2004, Active filed for a $46 million IPO, but pulled it back due to unfavorable conditions, which of course, have only deteriorated since. Active says it plans to spend the money on infrastructure and more acquisitions. In the past two years, the company's acquired 11 others in total. Nobody will say if the company's profitable — which probably means its not — but PaidContent heard Active pulled $107 million in revenue in 2007.

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<![CDATA[Microsoft funds ESPN's video tech provider]]> Microsoft joined backend video services provider Move Network's third funding round with an undisclosed investment today. Prior investors, including Benchmark Capital, Cisco and Disney, have already invested $67.3 million in the company. Novell cofounder Drew Major launched Move as a service to help users transfer large email files. The company switched its focus to video in 2004. In a 2007 article, Forbes writer Quentin Hardy handily explained how Move Networks' technology is different than YouTube:

Unlike YouTube-style Flash video, which fetches streamed bits in a series of requests from a set of servers at the sender's end, Move gets bits from the closest storage cache (similar to technology from Web video giant Akamai) and brings them back to the screen at the best streaming rate based on the network's traffic load.

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<![CDATA[Google getting into sports?]]> Watch out, ESPN.com: Google's after your fans. Derrick Eckhardt, a writer at fantasy-sports news site RotoNation, noticed that Google's serving up sports scores to mobile users. Eckhardt's sources tell him that Google has been looking at the sports market for a year, and greenlit a secret project to enter the sports-information business last November. There's no Google Sports portal, and no sign of the effort on Google's regular Web search. Should the likes of ESPN and Yahoo Sports be worried? Google Finance has yet to make a dent in Yahoo Finance. But remember how Google used to point users who typed in street addresses to Yahoo Maps? After Google created its own maps site, the links to Yahoo Maps swiftly disappeared. (Photo by Derrick Eckhardt)

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<![CDATA[In sports, Yahoo and ESPN are making writers rich]]> ESPNESPN and Yahoo Sports are on a hiring binge, bringing six-figure salaries to the generally tame world of sportswriting and stealing talent from print publications who can't afford anything close to the lucrative offers Yahoo and ESPN are serving up. The Washington Post has lost three writers to ESPN in 18 months. ESPN poached longtime Sports Illustrated scribe Rick Reilly for $3 million a year — substantially more than the $1 million he was already rumored to get from the Time Warner-owned magazine. "We are seeing free agency for sports journalists," says Leigh Steinberg, a top sports agent.

The portal is making a strong play in sports with original content. Yahoo already dominates the world of fantasy sports; adding real reporting to the mix, though, could boost Yahoo's pull with advertisers. The site has 20 sports writers, up from four two years ago. In fact, Yahoo is the most popular sports site on the net according to Nielsen/NetRatings, with 22 million visitors last month compared to ESPN.com's 20 million.

How does old media feel about this? A sports editor at the Washington Post says "we're used to being a destination, not a steppingstone." Get used to that feeling of being stepped on.

Unless, that is, you work for the national desk of a major newspaper. Remember Yahoo's disastrous experience with original news reporting: Kevin Sites's Afghanistan war-reporting diary hasn't been updated in a year. And people still giggle about former Yahoo media exec Lloyd Braun's proposal for an online news show with puppets. Sports is a good business bet, with talent getting rewarded competitively. Hard news? As the TV broadcasters figured out long ago, that's a sure money-loser.

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<![CDATA[Sports traffic no fantasy for Yahoo]]> Yahoo's hopes to compete with Google and Microsoft in search and online advertising may be a fantasy, but the Internet company is a market leader when it comes to fantasy. Fantasy sports, that is. For those of you who haven't joined the rotisserie leagues, the object is to rack up scores based on the individual stats of imaginary teams made of real players. Not only does Yahoo have a much larger share of fantasy traffic than traditional sports properties ESPN and CBS, but, according to Compete, its lead grew this year with the opening of the 2007 NFL season (football is by far the most popular fantasy sport).

Compete's analysis ignores a broad market of smaller sites dedicated to fantasy sports and those which feature only one sport, like NFL.com's offering, but it's safe to say that Yahoo has a big lead over the niche competitors, too. Google has no fantasy sports whatsoever. More importantly, there's little Scott Moore, who oversees sports at Yahoo, can do to mess up Yahoo's leadership in fantasy sports. Besides making live statistics a paid option, Yahoo hasn't changed its offering much in recent years — nor has it needed to. Fantasy sports may not be enough to save Yahoo, but it provides a real source of comfort that the company can still do something right.

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<![CDATA[ESPN continues to make sure no one can see its broadband website]]> ESPN 360ESPN is relaunching ESPN360, its sports-video broadband website, but it still hasn't figured out that new media require new business models. The Disney-owned channel has tried to use the same moneymaking scheme that worked so well on cable companies: Instead of charging consumers, charge the distributor. But few Internet service providers bit, limiting the site's reach to fewer than 16 million homes, and failures during the 2006 FIFA World Cup soccer games turned off the few viewers who actually logged on.The Wall Street Journal predicts that ESPN is poised to announce plans to relaunch the channel next month. But instead of addressing the basic problem of access, ESPN is refocusing 360 on live, second-tier events like polo, rugby and lacrosse. Way to make it even more niche.

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